Bill C shared a bunch of interested data and charts on how the Hokies stack up in 2020.
You can pretty much pinpoint on the week-to-week chart where Hendon Hooker took over as VT QB last year. (It's where things started moving up rapidly.) That has to be pretty encouraging for the Hokies despite the last couple years of general mediocrity. pic.twitter.com/pgsnF3G2lX— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) August 24, 2020
Hooker's legs made VT slightly less woefully inefficient running the ball, but the big impact was through the air: 9.0 ANY/A and 15.7 yds/completion. Most of the rec corps is back, and the line's no longer crazy-young. pic.twitter.com/e42dPBdoKG— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) August 24, 2020
Hooker's legs made VT slightly less woefully inefficient running the ball, but the big impact was through the air: 9.0 ANY/A and 15.7 yds/completion. Most of the rec corps is back, and the line's no longer crazy-young. pic.twitter.com/e42dPBdoKG— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) August 24, 2020
In an alternate universe, where we at least pretended to do what was necessary to have a full CFB season, VT had an EXTREMELY manageable schedule, especially if a full season of Hooker meant offensive overachievement.(Yes, updated rankings & projections coming at some point.) pic.twitter.com/0pPwg02M5v— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) August 24, 2020
Frank's run was incredible.
Virginia Tech's SP+ history. Pretty incredible just how much of this program's overall accomplishments came in a two-decade span. Beamer was maybe one of the 5-10 most *impactful* hires ever. pic.twitter.com/WKfn2XbyHU— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) August 24, 2020
Comments
I think it's pretty interesting that the data rating/sp+ for team after both the UVA game and the Kentucky rose - we must have overperformed in each of those even though we lost. Hopefully this year happens as planned right now and we can see some more of that (but, yknow, winning).
I think that this is also partially due to the poor performances against weak competition early in the year.
Basically, yes. According to Connelly's system, UVA had a "postgame win expectancy" of only 32%, meaning that just looking at an aggregation of what happened on each individual play, his system would have expected us to win that game with 68% certainty. Most of that difference comes from "turnover luck" (which UVA had 9 points of), since his numbers count every fumble as 0.5 turnovers and each pass breakup as (I think) 0.25 turnovers, regardless of whether possession changed hands. The data says that is more predictive of future turnovers than simply using the raw turnover numbers.
Edit to embed tweet:
I can't think of another situation where there QB changes and the defense takes a huge step. I chalk it up to Hooker's personality and leadership.
I don't know the locker room situation, but not having offensive 3 and outs helps the defense, and having a QB that won't throw the game away should help team moral. We had what 5 TOs against BC, we should have won that game by a mile, having a UM ready Hendon a month earlier would have won us that game. So it might not be all personality and leadership, it might simply be the team now has a chance so they play to win, instead of offense is going to lose it for us. But not having 3 and outs really helps a defense rest, and a rested defense is a better defense.
That was different than in the Beamer days where the offense wouldn't give the game away. They just wouldn't win it for you in 70% of the years.